Bridgerton S3

Project Overview

“We were involved in Bridgerton season 3 from the start,” Outpost on-set VFX Supervisor John McLaren explains. “From a VFX perspective, this is brilliant; being involved from pre-production means we get to have a close relationship with the art department, gather really important data from the set and be involved in the decision-making process, all of which provides us with the information we need to create the best visual effects.”

McLaren was the Production VFX Supervisor for this season of Bridgerton which focuses on Penelope. This season’s synopsis reads: “Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) who has finally given up her crush on Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) after hearing him disparage her to his friends last season. Instead, she’s focusing on finding a husband who will respect her independence so she may continue her double life as Lady Whistledown, away from her mother and sisters.

“Meanwhile Colin is back from his summer travels with a new look and major swagger. He is disheartened to learn that Penelope, the one person who always appreciated him as he was, is giving him the cold shoulder. Eager to win back her friendship, Colin helps Penelope boost her confidence so as to attract the perfect husband. But when his lessons start working a little too well, Colin is faced with figuring out what his true feelings for his friend really are.”

McLaren was there throughout filming to provide hands-on visual effects support: “I was on-set every day for six months and, together with the production team, I think we went to about 20 different locations around the UK,” McLaren explains.

“I loved being on set; we went to so many brilliant locations! We had access to all of these fantastic National Trust estates and manor houses as you would expect with filming Bridgerton."

“We shot a lot on location in Bath, Salisbury and in various places in London, most notably Ranger’s House in Greenwich which is the basis for the Bridgerton family house, and Hampton Court. All of these locations had a great regency feel about them,” McLaren continues.

Outpost were the main vendor for season 3 and had a wide variety of visual effects work, including full-CG establishing shots of London, regular green screen replacements, 3D asset creation, set extensions and general period accuracy clean up.

“The sequence that required the most involvement from us was the balloon sequence,” McLaren reveals. In episode three, while at a hot air balloon demonstration, Penelope finds herself in the path of a runaway balloon. Colin jumps into action and grabs the balloon’s tether to give Penelope time to escape.

“We shot this over the course of six or seven days over at Painshill in Surrey, after the preproduction team had several weeks of stunt rehearsals of the jeopardy sequence where Colin and the other lords hold onto the ropes and attempt to stop the balloon which has been caught in the wind,” McLaren explains.

“The balloon sequence was an exciting challenge,” adds Outpost CG Supervisor Mikael Pettersén. “We had to combine our CG with a practical rig built for the set. Based on the rig and some concept art and references, we built a CG balloon complete with the basket that was detailed enough to replace the on-set basket prop in some of the close-up shots.

“Another interesting challenge was how the balloon moved in relation to the rig. Typically, the ropes and basket would be a secondary simulation of the balloon's movement but with the practical rig, it was the opposite,” Pettersén continues.

“The rig dictated the CG balloon's movement unless we were using the full CG asset. To give the illusion that the balloon was driving the basket proved to be quite the challenge, but after many discussions about pivots, wind and air pressure, we finally got there. Our FX artists did a great job bringing the balloon to life,” Pettersén explains.

“Of course, filming over seven days meant we had to tackle varying weather conditions,” adds McLaren. “We had a mix of cloud cover and full sunshine and so there was a bit of work to be done to match the shadows and sky replacements. I think we got a bit lucky with the weather as there weren’t too many strong shadows to paint out.”

Another key sequence the team would undertake was the Dankworth-Finch ball in the season finale. “For the Butterfly Ball, art department and ourselves went through a number of references for the ceiling which we replaced with CG,” McLaren explains.

“Our main reference was Kew Gardens, which was the key reference for the steel structure and the glass work. So we did a lot of work from that from the modelling stage right through the final visual effects.

“For the butterflies themselves, we gathered a lot of reference of butterflies flying and landing, paying attention to the tentative movement they do before they take off. We studied that a lot, specifically for the shot where a butterfly lands on Penelope’s finger,” he continues.

“We never really knew how many butterflies we were going to have in the scene until we started filling the room, so it was all very sequence driven. We’d place the butterflies where we needed to fill the gaps and keep the interest going.

“Being on-set for this sequence was also key as one of our biggest challenges was getting people’s eyeline to follow something that isn’t there. We were able to direct and cue the eyeline and eye movement, particularly with Penelope’s interaction with the butterfly landing on her finger. There are other shots, too, where people are tracking the butterflies around the room and the syncing of the eyeline to the butterflies gives another level of believability and realism to the shot.”

Bringing the environments to life for this season would require a number of full-CG establishing shots of London. “When it came to the buildings, the main structures were already established in previous seasons, so our role was more to do with layout,” McLaren explains.

“We had a lot of establishing shots, I think around 15 full-CG establishers altogether, all a mix of daytime, nighttime and early morning. We wanted to find visually interesting layouts across a wide breadth of shots,” he continues.

For the family houses, there were a number of set extensions and design elements that needed to be added to the plate footage to bring them to life and to replicate the buildings of the previous seasons.

“Once again, the look and design elements of the building were already established, so we didn’t have to rework anything that was already done,” McLaren says. “The Featherington house was shot on location in Bath and we would work up all of the window surrounds and textures of the brickwork, adding in the CG neighbouring houses, too.”

“The Bridgerton house was shot in Greenwich and we did a similar thing there,” he continues. “In front of the Bridgerton house you have Grosvenor Square which didn’t physically exist in that location. In front of the Ranger’s House, which we were using as the base of the Bridgerton House, there was a park that had to be dressed to a certain extent on the day and then anything beyond that would have to be replaced with CG.”

“The series was shot over 12 months, so not only were we battling changing weather conditions, but also different seasons. And since we shot in so many different locations, we had to ensure a level of consistency across all of them to make them feel as though they were of the same area. For example, when Colin gets off the boat and comes to the Bridgerton House, the sequence is about 15 or 16 shots and is shot in three different locations, so part of our role there was to make them feel consistent with one another,” McLaren continues.

Reflecting on his time on the project, McLaren says: “My most enjoyable moments were on set working with all of the different disciplines, from the camera department to lighting and everything in between. When you’re all there, it feels like a really creative and collaborative process, which is great and a testament to the Shondaland and Netflix teams.”

All episodes of Bridgerton season 3 are available to watch on Netflix.